Where Dreams Go To Wait

Ohhh! Is that your son?

Yes! The one I told you about. The one studying Medicine at the University of Ibadan. Yes, he is on holiday. 

Wow! Come here. Come and shake my hand. I'm proud of you. You'll be the one to lift your family out of poverty. You're in 400 level, abi? It's a 6-year course, abi? In 2 years, you'll graduate and be earning big money. My doctor!! 

And I smile in the way we all learn to smile when our parents say we are studying at the best university in the country. The way we have learned to smile when that impressive Jambite says he will score over 80 in the Post UTME. The way we smile when we tell that fresher that 70/100 is, in fact, harder to score in Chem 156 than the 92 she had in UTME Chemistry—and she argues. The smile of knowing something that cannot be understood, no matter how hard we try to explain. 

And I neither had the strength nor heart to explain that their hopes were built on delusions and the absence of that knowledge which comes only when you share a room with the affected. I did not have the mind to tell my mother and her friend that doctors just do not earn enough to bring themselves, their five brothers, and their parents out of poverty. Or simply tell them that six minus four is not equal to two. They had to believe that the University of Ibadan was the best in the country and that we would later go on to rule the country and the world in our respective spheres. They had to believe, as I once believed—as a 13-year-old secondary school student who had just finished reading Gifted Hands and had the seed of hope thrust into his heart—that passion alone would get you to stand before a mountain-high dune and that passion would get you to stand at its peak. 

Before the seed of Dr. Ben Carson's dreams and journey, I was just a boy whose biggest dream was coming first in his class again. And holidays actually meant I could wind down and forget about books for a month. I was a dreamer whose dreams were within reach because they were lucid. And I didn't have to break the bank when dreams were free. We all shared the same dreams. More than half the 150 science students could become the next ground-breaking, pacesetting surgeon. 

And dozens woke from the dreams before the bed was laid. Before JAMB, figuring out that even the government-owned institutions required considerable funds was enough to ensure dozens reset their dreams. They would learn crafts and non-erudite professions. They would learn skills to live life without dreaming. Because after all, dreams were expensive. And dreams distort time. Three or four years wasted chasing medicine. 

By the time I gained admission to study Dentistry, less than ten dared to maintain the old dreams out of one-fifty. But we dreamt on. We push forward not with the old feverish passion we had as readers imbued with the seeds of hope. We move with the pain of lost time and the scars of difficult goals we set, gotten, and reset. 2021 did not mean I would graduate in 2027, even as my admission letter read: Provisional admission to study a 6-year course. I was welcomed to the field of lost dreams, abandoned dreams, slowed dreams, misplaced dreams, and still-being-chased dreams with an eight-month industrial action—an eye opener that here, in this school, time is inconsequential and unreliable.

Barely scraping a pass in my Zoology practicals, Organic Chemistry, Motion, and Vectors courses was enough to make me question the ease and feasibility of my dreams. Seeing mates drop out due to sickness or the inability to secure finances to chase dreams. 

Nobody cared that the lecture theatres were not conducive to learning and that we had to read on our own if we were interested in passing. Nobody bothered to worry that even to fail, we kept caffeine-aided sleepless nights. Medical school made the freshman year look like a toy story trailer. Always struggling to catch up. Never in line with the progression of the syllabus. Always trying to cover. And till we entered the exam halls with black rims under our eyes, we acted like last-second perusing would actually count. Because come what may, we wanted chips on the rocks we were forced to drop. We wanted satisfied consciences because we got deep finger impressions on pillows we never use. The truth we had to face was that most of the teaching would be done by ourselves, and marks were rewards for going through the necessary extra mile to meet the minimum requirements to pass. Some would pause or simply drop off in the first years, the preclinical phase of medical school. 

Barely into the rigors of clinical school, and I'm currently hanging around somewhere because the Best Medical School in Sub-Saharan Africa could not provide accommodation for all its students. Forced to start reading for my exams before my first lectures because, as everyone knows, four weeks cannot possibly be enough to teach or comprehend the basics of Pathology and Pharmacology, even if I took lessons from professors. 

How it will go, I shall find out. 
And the sandy mountains before me now look too tall and porous for my leaden and wobbling feet. And passion has evaporated in the heat of the harsh reality of the institution of dream-chasing. 
But when I see friends that hail me, doctor, I smile. I smile because they wouldn't believe me if I told them what the smile meant. And I smile because my mother has to believe that the vision of my dreams actualizing makes me smile. Because my brother needs the motivation to tread the path that could be better than the one I tread. I smile because even the ones who teach us believe theirs is the best school, and we, the students, are privileged. I smile because no matter what we say or what I say, the next class-topper to pick Gifted Hands would believe in the Ben Carson dream.

But we all need to dream. Maybe the smiles of the current young dreamers will mean something different and more sincere.

Abdulrahmon Quareeb